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1.
The thing is, Neil doesn't talk about his mom much. He misses her, and he aches for her, but he doesn't talk about her in front of the Foxes beyond the short outline he gave them of his time on the run. He doesn't talk about how she made him hurt, how she stitched him up, how she looked at him as she died and told him to keep running and never stop.
Neil doesn't talk about his mom and doesn't want to think about what she'd do to him if she saw him now. He has a family, he has Exy, and he has Andrew. He has more than enough, more than he ever could have dreamed of.
Neil doesn't talk about his mom until a warm fall day outside the locker room, waiting for the start of their game with his team and family. It's a place that she doesn't belong, where not even a memory of her belongs, but she wriggles her way in and takes root in his chest.
Dan is braiding Renee's hair while she sits in a chair, her fingers sure and graceful. Slumped in the chair next to her, Allison waits her turn, dark red fingernails tapping at the seat. "If you move any slower Dan-"
Dan scowls and doesn't lose her focus on Renee's hair. "Shut the fuck up, Reynolds."
See, the thing is, Neil recognizes the braid she's doing in Renee's hair, remembers the motions and the rhythm, remembers the feeling of his mom's smooth hair slipping through his fingers as he helped her keep her hair out of her face. Neil recognizes and speaks before he's really thought it through.
"I can do your hair." The team drops into silence for a moment, before Allison snorts.
"Fat chance, you can't even brush your own hair. I'm not letting you near mine with a ten-foot pole." Ignoring her words, Neil stands from the couch, stretching until his back pops. He can feel the weight of Andrew's gaze on him, so he stretches just a bit further. Chancing a glance over his shoulder, Neil catches Andrew's dark, barely blank gaze for a long second, before he makes his way to Allison.
He bumps her shoulder for hair elastics, and, relenting, she gives him two.
"Two French braids?" Neil offers, moving around to her back and deftly splitting her hair down the middle. There's an extra brush at Dan's feet and he bends to scoop it up.
Allison huffs, and Neil can almost see her rolling her eyes. "Fine."
Neil works quickly and efficiently, braiding and twisting. With her head start, Dan finishes before him and watches him work. She lets out a low whistle.
"Neil actually knows what he's doing, damn. He might be better at French braids than I am." Neil's lips twitch up. He's not really paying attention when he speaks, more focused on Allison's long hair, and he's the opposite of tense, relaxed in the face of a game and surrounded by his family. It never occurs to Neil to watch what he says.
"I used to braid my mom's hair for her when we were on the run. I can do a French braid in the dark and it'll still look good." Neil says absently. He's paying enough attention, at least, to omit the fact that he has done them in the dark with a concussion and a bullet in his shoulder. Somehow, he thinks that the Foxes wouldn't react well to that.
When he ties off the last of Allison's braids and takes a step back to admire his work, he notices the heavy silence in the room. They're all watching him, Andrew included, but it's Matt that speaks.
"You never talk about your mom. Thank you for trusting us with that."
Neil blinks, startled. "Uh. You're welcome?"
Renee smiles up at him, angelic to the core, and Nicky looks like he wants to wrap Neil in a hug. Turning in her seat, Allison ruffles his hair and then grabs a mirror to check her braids. Andrew rolls his eyes and rises from the couch, brushing Neil's shoulder as he passes.
"I hate you."
2.
The second time Neil talks about his mom, it's very intentional. Despite how the others rag on him for being oblivious, Neil isn't blind, and he knows that his teammates like when he opens up to them. Talking about his mom will never be comfortable for him, but he can do it if it makes them happy.
Besides, now that he's started this, the words keep welling up. The consequences of holding his tongue for nine years, Neil supposes.
The team holds a movie night, freshmen not invited. After at least twenty minutes of debate, Nicky and Allison agree on Mulan, part of the unspoken mission of the upperclassmen to show Neil all the Disney movies that he had missed out on. His favorite, by far, is Lilo and Stitch.
The first move finishes and Neil finds himself the recipient of five expectant stares. He shrugs, fighting a smile. Andrew radiates warmth where they are nearly pressed together shoulder to knee, and Neil thinks this heat in his chest is happiness.
"It was fine." Nicky throws a handful of popcorn at him for that. With a cold look at his cousin, Andrew brushes a kernel out of his hair. Nicky squeaks and hides behind Kevin.
"Fuck off." The great Kevin Day says, downing an impressive amount of vodka in one swig.
Matt claps his hands and stands, ruffling Neil's hair as he passes into the kitchen. He's really not sure why everyone is so obsessed with his hair, but it seems to be an ongoing theme.
"I'm going to embrace the college stereotype here, but ramen anyone?" Matt calls from the kitchen. Neil feels his nose crinkle up on reflex, even as Dan calls out an affirmative.
"Never again." Neil says firmly enough that Andrew shifts beside him. He looks over his shoulder to see Matt leaning in the doorway, box of noodles in hand.
"C'mon Neil, you have to like ramen, it's a college staple!" Matt protests. Neil crinkles his nose again, and ignores Nicky muttering to Allison that he looks adorable.
"I ate ramen for roughly fourteen months straight. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Fourteen months. I will never eat ramen again."
Matt looks vaguely queasy.
"How are you alive?" Nicky asks in awe.
Neil shrugs again, enjoying their horror. "Ramen is easy to store and buy in bulk, simple to make, and cheap. When Mom and I were on the run, it was all we had access to for awhile." Neil smiles, wry but genuine. "Mom would always tell me I could eat or complain, but not both." It hadn't been the most pleasant lesson to learn, and Neil had spent hungry nights sure he couldn't swallow another bite if his life depended on it, but he'd learned. He'd shut his mouth, eaten his ramen, and his mother's marks had faded from his skin. It was better than starving and he'd lived through it.
Of all people, it's Allison who looks outraged at this. Perhaps Neil should have expected it, knowing her complicated relationship with food.
"That's pretty fucked up. Did you just starve otherwise?"
Neil shrugs, trying not to worry about the way that Andrew tenses up next to him, eyes boring into the side of his face.
"I just learned to eat what was put in front of me. Didn't take long."
Allison doesn't like that answer if her expression is any indication, but Renee places a calming hand on her arm and changes the subject.
Neil turns his head to meet Andrew's gaze, surprised to find his eyes dark and cold.
"What's wrong?" Neil asks in quiet Russian.
Andrew snorts and shakes his head once, turning his attention back to the television and the new movie being loaded up.
3.
Neil doesn't get sick very often. He can count on one hand the number of times he's been sick enough to be stuck in bed, and within those times, bed had been the passenger seat of a car and stuck had often meant walking for hours to a safe house in the dark. Neil had complained once, only once. A concussion on top of a fever had made things a million times worse.
He wasn't allowed to be sick, so Neil simply didn't get sick. Colds were easy to power through, fevers could be dealt with covertly as long as he was careful, and vomiting could be explained away as bad fish. Mom had never figured out when he was sick after that first time, even when Neil had passed out in the shower with a 105 degree fever. He was good at hiding, lying, surviving, and avoiding his mother's fists at all costs.
It's mid-November when Neil catches the bug going around campus. It starts with a mild cough and a runny nose, something easy enough to ignore. Andrew shoots him a dark, knowing look after their suite runs out of tissues, but he doesn't say anything. When Neil wakes up the next morning soaked through with sweat and aching all over, he knows things might be more serious than he thought.
Stifling his groan, Neil eases himself off his bed. He doesn't move for a good minute and a half, trying desperately to keep his balance as everything spins around him. Fuck. He hates being dizzy, it's going to be murder on his game.
Neil makes his way to the bathroom, squinting at the clock that tells him Kevin's alarm won't go off for another hour. Despite the fact that the floor seems to be moving, Neil doesn't stumble once. He's almost proud.
Pressing the bathroom door shut, Neil takes a deep breath before flicking the light switch. Headache, check.
It takes another minute for Neil to peel open his eyes, and the brightness has him hunched over the toilet, retching near silently. He feels marginally better after emptying his stomach, but Neil forces himself to look in the mirror. At least like this, glassy eyed and pale, scars red and stark against his cheeks, he looks barely anything at all like his father.
Neil digs out the thermometer he'd bought yesterday when he went to the pharmacy for more tissues, and shoves it in his mouth. It beeps, and tells him he has a 102 degree fever. Neil gargles some mouth wash. He's had worse.
Quietly as he can, he makes his way out into the kitchen and starts packing away as much water as physically possible, tossing back an aspirin, knowing he'll need it if he wants to stay on his feet during practice today. The fear of messing up and giving away his weakness brings back the feeling of bruises against his skin.
Andrew gives Neil a long, assessing look on the way out of the dorm, and Neil steadily meets his gaze. If Andrew has something to say, he's not going to make it easy for him. By the time they make it to the court, Neil's head is pounding again, no thanks to Nicky's chatter and the rising sun. Still, Neil slips into his gear, reminding himself that he's had worse, that this is nothing, that he's fine, fine, fine. No one seems notice that Neil is more quiet than usual, and he focuses hard to make sure that he doesn't waver on his feet.
Practice begins and Neil tries his best to lose himself in the sport he loves.
Twenty minutes in, his head is so heavy it feels like it might fall off his shoulders, and he's wheezing in air like it's a hot commodity. Neil's legs are jelly, he's soaked with sweat, and everything aches. The court is spinning, spinning, spinning but he keeps moving, keeps throwing himself around after the ball.
One of the freshmen checks him, and Neil goes sprawling, lacking the ability to catch his fall. Things go black for a long second, but Neil scrambles to his feet as fast as he can. No one seems to notice the extra second of delay but Andrew. Neil can feel his gaze on his back, heavy and unreadable, but he keeps going.
Another ten minutes, and they've stopped play while Kevin calls the other freshmen strikers over to show them a technique. Neil takes three stumbling steps in their direction, before his head gives one last painful throb and everything goes black.
*
Things fade back into awareness gradually. Neil fights with his eyelids and tries desperately to make sense of what's happening around him. There's someone leaning over him, and his helmet is off, and Neil blinks until the face resolves into familiar blond hair and hazel eyes. Oh. Andrew. That's okay then.
A cool hand presses against his forehead and then pulls back with a startled hiss. "He's burning up!" That sounds like Matt, and Neil feels terribly, horribly exposed. Fuck. Without meaning to, he realizes he's waiting for his Mom's hand yanking him by the hair and her voice screaming in his ear. He flinches. Andrew very obviously freezes, and removes his hands from where they were loosening Neil's collar.
"Neil." It's a question and statement all in one.
Neil coughs once, sharply, and it awakes all the aches in his body from practice and sickness alike. He ignores all of it and forces himself into a sitting position. Before the world even stops spinning, he tells the blur of faces around him, "I'm fine."
He hears Allison's "Are you fucking serious", and Nicky's "Why don't you understand the meaning of that word", but he mostly hears Andrew's sharp, "Shut up".
Neil shuts up.
Everything stops spinning just in time for Abby to kneel in front of him, concern etched into her expression. She presses a cool hand against his forehead, brushing sweaty hair from his eyes. Similar to Matt, she hisses and pulls her hand back. Not stopping her examination, she asks, "What happened?"
Neil tries not to flinch from the hands pressing against the sides of his neck and opens his mouth to say-
"He just collapsed. He's been shaky all morning but-" Dan cuts him off. Neil doesn't let that stop him.
"I'm fine." Fuck, but his head hurts. Abby rolls her eyes, and from somewhere above him Andrew growls.
"No, Neil, you're not. From what I can tell, you have the bug that's been going around campus. How long have you been sick?" Abby asks, reaching into her med bag to fish out a thermometer.
Neil scowls, something like panic stirring in his gut. He knows it's irrational, he knows that he's safe here, but-
"I'm not sick. I'm-"
A hand slaps down over his mouth. Andrew is clearly not in the mood.
"He has had a cough and a runny nose for three days, a headache for two, and this morning he woke up with a fever." Andrew lists tonelessly. There's a beat of silence as everyone takes in the answer from such an unlikely source, before Allison interrupts,
"And you let him come to practice?!"
Andrew shifts his blank gaze onto Allison and his hand still hasn't left Neil's mouth. Neil is sure Andrew doesn't know he's doing it, but his thumb is moving back forth across Neil's cheekbone, lulling him into a state of calm.
"I do not let the idiot do anything. He makes his own stupid choices." Andrew informs Allison. That shuts her up.
The next few minutes is a mess of trying to get Neil onto his feet and stable. After the third time his knees buckle, Neil hears Andrew heave a sigh. He steps in front of Neil, and Neil can see the thin furrow in Andrew's forehead that means he's concerned. None of it shows in his voice, but Neil feels warm regardless. "Yes or no?"
Someone, it might be Aaron, goes, "Now's not the time for you two to-"
Neil ignores him, and says, "Yes."
Before Neil knows what's happening, Andrew bends and then Neil's no longer touching the ground. Neil blinks at the underside of Andrew's jaw, stunned and faintly nauseous. Oh. It's surprisingly... nice, being carried by Andrew. Neil wishes he could enjoy it more.
When Abby finishes lecturing and giving him a checkup, he finds himself settled on the couch outside the locker room, on the receiving end of some ferocious glares. Wymack crosses his arms.
"If you ever pull that shit again, I'm benching you for a month. When you're sick, you're sick. You call me and you sleep, so that you don't collapse on the fucking court. Do you understand?"
Neil swallows. "Yes, coach."
Wymack nods once and leaves the rest of the team to it. Neil refuses to meet any of their eyes and shifts uncomfortably.
"What the hell, Neil?" Dan finally says, breaking the heavy silence. Neil bites the bullet, ignoring the phantom sensation of his mother beating him senseless, and answers honestly.
"I'm sorry. I'm not used to- to being in a place where I can be sick. I wasn't supposed to be- I couldn't be sick, before." An explanation was the least he owed them.
"You can't control being sick, Neil." Renee says, slowly, like she doesn't quite understand him. Neil shrugs and doesn't meet anyone's eyes. Andrew is a warm presence by his side, and the medication Abby gave him already has him hurting less.
"I had to, if we wanted to survive."
No one is happy with that answer, and the silence weighs on Neil the entire ride back to the dorms. Andrew doesn't look at him, doesn't say a word to him, but steers him towards the couch. He closes the curtains, and the dim light smooths over some of Neil's rough edges. Dumping a blanket on his head, Andrew stands above Neil, glaring as Neil fumbles his way out of the covers. His limbs are slow and sticky, like he's moving through syrup.
"You are an idiot." Andrew tells him flatly.
Neil nods, acquiescing. He stretches out a hand to catch the sleeve of Andrew's sweatshirt, avoiding skin.
"Yes. Stay?"
Andrew stays.
Neil dozes to the background noise of a quiz show, the top of his head just brushing Andrew's thigh. There's a hand resting on his hair, not combing through, but resting as if by accident. Seconds before Neil drops off for good, the hand curls minutely.
"You are not who your mother made you to be."
Before Neil can find words to respond, he's asleep.
4.
Neil is not having a good day. To be fair, it's been more than just one bad day, with the fiasco of Aaron's trial and his vulnerability in front of the team, November in general hasn't been good for Neil. This morning, he'd woken trembling from some nightmare he couldn't remember and hadn't been able to so much glance at his reflection since. He sees Nathan everywhere and finds himself jumping at loud noises and raised voices.
Awful timing as usual, as today is supposed to be the Foxes' celebration of Thanksgiving. By the time they've arrived at Abby's, Neil thinks he's done a decent job of calming down and appearing okay. Andrew has stopped watching him like something that's about to explode at least, and he's managing a casual conversation with Nicky. Matt mobs him as soon as they make their way inside, bearing five different flavors of pie that Neil is sure Andrew will claim the excess of.
Neil lets himself be swept into a hug and restrains his urge to flinch away from touch. Everything is raw, but he reminds himself, it's just Matt, you're fine, and he's able to return it with a semblance of normalcy. Of course, Andrew doesn't miss his flinch, and Neil can feel the weight of his eyes from three yards away.
Looking harried, Abby appears in the kitchen doorway. She waves Neil in, smiling as she orders him to help in the kitchen.
Because Neil has chronically bad luck, the second he puts down his bag of pies next to the excessive bottles of alcohol, Abby is hustling him to the counter and shoving a knife into his hands.
"You're the only one of these idiots I trust not to kill someone with this or set something on fire. Chop these potatoes for me? Dan and Matt are peeling."
Neil nods on autopilot, but Abby might as well have told him to dance naked in the street for all that he hears her. The knife is heavy in his hands, and he can feel Lola's breath on the back of his neck, telling him to fight like you mean it or daddy's going to come teach you, one-on-one. There's something like panic in the back of his throat, and the only thing that knocks it loose is Dan handing him the first potato.
It takes all of Neil's focus to ground himself in the present. The knife still feels sinister in his hands, like a voice whispering in his ear that he's just like his father after all. Logically, he knows this is because he's having a Bad Day, but the other half of him, the half his mother made, tells him to stop being weak and suck it up.
So Neil sucks it up and starts chopping potatoes.
He knows that Matt and Dan are holding a conversation to his right, and that the others are chatting in the other room. Neil knows this, but he hears none of it, entirely focused on the knife in his hands and the potatoes under his fingers. Lacking the strength to divide his attention, Neil descends into his own little world. It's a miracle the others don't notice.
Or maybe not a miracle at all, since it means that Nicky thinks nothing of walking over and smacking Neil on the shoulder to get him to move out of the way. Neil is so wrapped up in carefully chopping, holding off his panic, that he doesn't hear Nicky come up behind him. The hand on his shoulder comes out of nowhere, and Neil, like he's been doing all day today, jumps and flinches away. Jerking in his shock, the knife skitters through the potato and gashes into the meaty palm of Neil's hand.
It traces a line of burning fire, but Neil, hardly aware of what's going on around him, of Nicky jumping back and shouting, "Shit, Neil!", of the knife clattering to the counter and conversation cutting off, keeps his reaction to nothing more than a startled hiss.
It's this that's the crowning on Neil's horrible, no good, very bad day.
Rational thought flees to the back of his brain, and Neil could be in Baltimore, Berlin, Versailles, Seattle, Evermore-
He looks at the bleeding gash on his left hand and prods it experimentally. Definitely needs stitches then.
He ignores the people around him, the hands touching his shoulders, reaching for his arms, and swipes one of the bottles of whiskey off the counter. This is familiar, this is a routine he knows, that he could do concussed, shot, with his eyes closed. Neil opens the bottle and takes two large swigs, before leaning over the sink and pouring a bit of the whiskey over the cut on his hand. It stings, like always, but the warmth in his stomach dulls it a bit, and Neil restrains himself to another hiss. Suck it up, Abram.
He's looking around for a needle and thread, when a hand blocks his line of sight, not touching him, just drawing his attention. Neil frowns, irritated. To be safe, to get back on the road, to escape his father's men, he should stitch this up as quickly as possible, and interruptions are- Oh. Neil traces the arm down black armbands to an unamused Andrew. Oh. Right.
It comes back to him all at once that he's in Abby's kitchen, that this knife wound was an accident, that he's safe.
"Oh."
Andrew moves his hand to the back of Neil's neck, glaring at him, but ignoring the others. The weight grounds him better than his own pathetic attempts earlier, and with Andrew's muttered, "idiot", other voices drip back in.
Nicky is in the corner, chanting what seems to be a rendition of, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Neil", that is teary enough to make Neil uncomfortable.
Abby and Wymack are a step behind Andrew, looking concerned and fed up, respectively. The first-aid kit in Abby's hand calls to Neil, but before he can ask for it, Wymack shakes his head. "Fucking christ, kid."
"Neil, can I see your hand?" Abby steps into the spot that Andrew vacates, moving slowly like Neil is a spooked cat. Andrew takes a step to the side, but doesn't remove his hand from the back of Neil's neck. He's thankful.
Swinging his hand into Abby's line of sight, Neil shrugs at Matt's curse from somewhere in the back. "It's just a little cut. Do you have any needle and thread? I can stitch it up really quick."
Abby gapes at him, and in the background, someone, probably Allison, goes, "What the fuck, Neil."
He scoffs at their shock.
"Seriously, this is basically a paper cut, and it's not even my dominant hand. I was stitching up my mom's bullet holes at twelve." Andrew's hand tightens on the back of his neck, and Neil flicks him an exasperated look. Why does everyone always look at Neil like he's insane?
"You are not stitching yourself up. Sit down at the table. Now." Abby sounds perilously close to pissed, and unwilling to bring another angry woman down upon himself, Neil sits. Everyone not-so-subtly hovers.
Kevin leans close, staring intently at the cut.
"This better not affect your playing."
Neil rolls his eyes.
Abby opens her first aid kit, pulling out some type of numbing gel, and Neil shakes his head. He's not exaggerating, it's not a bad cut, it barely needs stitches at all.
"You are getting numbing gel, Neil." Dan says flatly.
Neil sighs.
"We never had it on the road, and this is nothing compared to a bullet wound. I'll be fine."
Andrew tightens his grip on the back of Neil's neck again, and Neil gives up. He doesn't wince once throughout the entire process and Abby makes it as quick as possible. It's a miracle Neil doesn't slip back into memories, with how familiar this all feels. A kitchen table, whiskey burning down his throat, the steady threading and pulling on his skin, the flare of pain from somewhere on his body. Even Abby's long hair, tied up out of her face, threatens to tug Neil backwards. At least she's not yelling at him for being stupid, like his mother always did.
It's one of the few things that anchors him to the present.
That, and the fact that as soon as Abby finishes, she points him to the living room. "I am never trusting you with a knife again. People who just got stitches sit on the couch and wait for others to serve them, regardless of their past experiences. Understand?"
Neil does his best to smile, and searches for a joke. "First time for everything, right?"
Abby looks simultaneously heartbroken and infuriated so Neil thinks the joke probably fell flat. Well, it was true at least. On the run with his mother, stitches meant her yelling at him to run faster and at Evermore, they were something to be broken at the next practice.
Okay, maybe Neil is a little fucked up.
Andrew tugs him to the couch, and pulls Neil's hand onto his lap, studying it. Conversation in the kitchen is slow to resume, but it creeps forward until it's as loud as before.
Feeling his stare on the side of his face, Neil turns to meet Andrew's eyes. They're shadowed with something Neil can't identify, a nameless emotion that borders anger and protectiveness.
"Yes or no?"
Neil's barely gotten his mouth around the word yes before Andrew kisses him with a ferocity bordering on painful. Though Neil's lips feel swollen and burning, Andrew's grip on his bandaged never so much as shifts, careful to the last.
5.
They're up on the roof, and the air is cold enough to make Neil shiver.
His skin is overheated, burning with Andrew's touch, and the contrast between that and the chilled breeze sends goosebumps up Neil's spine. Andrew's breath is hot against his face, brushing against Neil's kiss-swollen lips, his forehead a line of heat where they press together.
Their only points of contact are where their foreheads touch, Andrew's careful hand in Neil's hair, and the thumb Andrew is stroking across Neil's bandaged hand. There's something warm and overwhelming in Neil's stomach, a sense of safety, a sense of anger at anyone that would call Andrew a monster, a sense of wonder at the gentleness of his hands.
Neil doesn't know what to do with it, but he thinks this is what happiness feels like. This, the feeling when his Foxes win, when Matt calls him his best friend, when Allison ruffles his hair, when Nicky pulls him into a hug, when Wymack says he's proud of him, when he's with Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Fuck. It sweeps through his stomach and up his spine, leaving a trail of warmth in its wake.
Like with all good things in his life, his mother's voice creeps in to ruin it. You promised. Never stop running, never stay put, never trust anyone. Neil shouldn't feel guilty for breaking every promise he made to her, but sometimes it hits him hard, how far he's strayed from her plan. She would hate him now, beat the shit out of him for making such reckless decisions with his safety, maybe kill him for touching an Exy stick again after everything it brought them to-
The happiness Neil feels at Andrew's touch slips away as quickly as his awareness of the roof around them. His mother plants herself in the front of his mind until she's all he sees, feels, thinks, regrets-
"Staring."
It draws Neil out of his headspace as surely as if Andrew had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. Neil blinks, startled as he realizes he'd been staring at Andrew while his mind drifted. They've both caught their breath, and some of the heat has leeched out of Neil's skin, the desire that had been pooling in his stomach dissipated. Andrew's thumb is still stroking back forth across the bandage on Neil's hand, and the contrast between the tenderness and Andrew's blank face has him speaking.
"My mom would be so angry with me. I- Fuck. I broke my promise." There's a disgusting note of fear in his voice that Neil doesn't mean to let out. If it's fear of what his mother would do, or fear of his own actions, he doesn't know.
Andrew holds Neil's gaze, golden eyes, like always, transfixing Neil. The hand in Neil's hair tightens briefly, just enough to draw Neil into the here and now, before dropping to securely clutch his nape. It's a familiar weight that anchors Neil like nothing else has ever been able to.
There is no shift in the blank appraisal on Andrew's face, but somehow that just adds weight to his words when he speaks. His calm, disinterested mask smooths all of Neil's rough edges.
"She is dead. You are not."
Fuck. Neil knows that shouldn't be enough to still him, make his breath come easier, but it is, Andrew always is. He lets his eyes close, lets everything else drop away except for the gentle pressure against his hand and the heavy grip on his neck. It's only when Andrew's breath stutters, just barely, that he opens his eyes again. Andrew stares at him, dark and unreadable, some unnameable emotion in his gaze that Neil knows he would deny to his dying day.
"Yes or no?" Andrew asks, apparently uncaring of the answer.
"Yes, always yes." Andrew rolls his eyes, blankness back in place, but the heat of his mouth is anything except disinterested. Neil loses himself in it, until his mother is nothing more than an unconscious thought. Lips and careful touches burn away everything else.
6.
It all comes to an end on another team movie night. Later, Neil will almost think it's fitting.
He's on the couch with Andrew, like usual. Andrew has the arm on one side and Neil on the other, who in turn is bracketed in by Kevin, with Aaron taking the other arm. Nicky is sprawled at their feet, while the upperclassmen have somehow managed to pile all four of themselves into a love seat.
After a near silent "yes or no?", Neil plays with Andrew's hand, tracing the bones of it and the veins, drawing little patterns with his fingertips. Neil likes having something to do with himself, and, judging by the relaxed set of Andrew's shoulders, he doesn't mind being the object of attention. Neil's so distracted by Andrew's quiet warmth that he misses the last half of the movie.
"Ugh, straight people are so gross." Nicky declares, which is enough to make Neil glance up from Andrew's hand and catch the soppy, cliché kiss happening on screen. Rolling his eyes, Neil goes back to fiddling with Andrew's fingers. "Right, Neil, my non-straight-amigo?"
Neil huffs a breath that might be a laugh, might be a scoff. Kevin is scowling beside him, probably biting down on his "being gay in sports is hard" speech, as he swallows a too large gulp of vodka. "I don't swing, Nicky."
Instead of responding, Nicky flicks his eyes pointedly down to Neil and Andrew's entangled hands. Maybe it's the few shots of alcohol Neil has had, the tipsiness just barely making itself known, but he doesn't stop his movements. Unfortunately, Nicky's focus on Neil has drawn the others in as well. It's Allison that poses the question.
"Have you ever kissed a girl before, Neil?" A knot of tension starts at Neil's spine and he does his best not to tense. He slips into the slight warmth in his stomach and the feel of Andrew's skin. He must notice Neil's pause, but he doesn't comment.
"A few." Neil says, not looking up to see the reaction. "Wasn't worth it though."
"Wasn't worth it?" That's Dan probably, but Neil is mentally checked out of this conversation. Andrew turns his palm upward, and Neil traces the lines, fate, heart, life. His mouth answers of its own accord, and looking back he'll never be able to say what came over him. Maybe some part of him just wanted the truth out there, maybe he was just tired of this line of questioning, maybe he was more tipsy than he thought, but either way he says,
"I preferred breathing. The second time Mom caught me, she broke three ribs."
Neil doesn't realize what he's given away until Andrew's hand abruptly freezes and curls into a fist.
"She did what." Andrew demands. Nicky chokes on his beer.
The bottomless rage in Andrew's eyes makes his breath catch, and Neil turns his gaze to the others to see them all watching with the same horrified gaze. Fuck. He never meant to tell them that.
Aaron is the only one that seems to be taking it in stride, meeting Neil's eyes for once without animosity or hatred, but understanding.
"How many of those scars did she give you?"
The gaze of everyone in the room threatens to suffocate him. Neil swallows. He's not sure if he feels defensive of his mother, or relieved that someone is finally asking. He's not sure how to feel, with Andrew's hand so tightly clenched that his knuckles are white.
"Just as many as she needed to." Neil shrugs. It's not something they can understand he thinks, except for maybe Aaron. She was keeping them alive, keeping him in line. She loved him, fierce and sure, but protecting him was more important than a couple of bruises. He doubts the others will understand that.
Matt lets out a sound close to a growl, and his face is devastated when Neil catches his eye. Even Kevin is scowling and looking at him with something approximating pain.
As the seconds tick by, Neil feels Andrew tense further. Neil is almost afraid to look up and see his anger.
It's Renee that finds words first.
"Neil. Neil, look at me." Neil searches out her face, and almost loses his breath at the shift it's undergone. There's the darkness that Renee hides beneath the surface, that rage that's close to Andrew's, that ability for danger that she hides most of the time. "You understand that what she did was wrong. Right?"
Neil shakes his head, frustrated despite himself. "She did what she had to, to keep us alive. I was a dumb kid that was going to get us killed."
Allison growls this time. "You were ten."
Neil shrugs, uncomfortable.
Andrew stands abruptly, and his anger rolls off of him in waves. He leaves the room without a word, and Neil's gut churns.
He's about to stand and go after him, but Nicky steps into his path. For once, his face is solemn.
"Neil, can I hug you?" Nicky never asks permission, and that's how Neil knows this is serious. He nods and Nicky squeezes him within an inch of his life.
The others mob him next, Renee then Allison then Matt and Dan, until he's cocooned in warmth and love like he's never felt before. Despite the fact that he's still confused, still unsure, he knows that these people, these Foxes, are his family. They'll never hurt him like his other family did, regardless of the reasons.
Fuck, but he loves them.
*
Neil finds Andrew on the roof, because their lives are about full circle endings and symmetry.
Andrew's smoking a cigarette, feet dangling over the side of the building. He doesn't look up when Neil slips through the door.
He doesn't acknowledge Neil, even when he steals the cigarette out of his fingers to breathe in the smoke, Andrew simply lights another one. It's Neil's job to cut through the silence then.
"She was my mom. I loved her." Neil means to give Andrew a justification, to reason with him, but bare fact comes out instead. It feels somehow dishonest and wrong to explain away his abuse, or at least that's what the others told him. Neil was a victim, they said, but Neil has always hated that goddamn word. Ha. He's turning into Andrew.
The silence hangs for another eternity, before Andrew stubs out his cigarette and shifts to stare at Neil's face. There's that dark, nameless emotion back, and Andrew doesn't try to hide it, he lets Neil look his fill.
"I would kill her myself, if she was still alive." Neil flinches back on reflex. Andrew's hand finds the back of his neck. "Stop it. You are more than you ever could have been with her."
Neil lets out a breath that's more a sigh than anything, and closes his eyes. Despite the betrayal it feels like, he nods. Just a little.
"Yes or no?" He mumbles.
"Yes." Andrew says, sure and steady.
Neil lets himself droop forward until his forehead meets Andrew's shoulder. The tension in Andrew's body slips away after a second, when it becomes clear Neil doesn't plan on moving. The hand on his neck slips upward into the curls of his hair and combs through, once, twice, and then unendingly.
They stay like that for ages, Neil drawing comfort and Andrew letting him. When Neil finally pulls back, Andrew's face is blank again, but his hands are unbearably gentle as he pulls Neil into a kiss.